Friday, July 24, 2015

Asphalt Fiber Testing: Cost Effective Quality Roadways



Many State Department of Transportations (DOT) are looking for more cost effective pavement materials without compromising the quality of the pavement life-cycle, as well as extending the life-cycle of the pavement. State DOTs look at testing to determine if pavement materials meet the criteria to be approved for usage in their roadways. The National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) researches asphalt products in areas of structural design, construction methods, materials and testing, performance, pavement preservation, pavement rehabilitation and highway safety.

In July of 2012, NCAT conducted a field study on accelerated performance testing (APT) and FORTA-FI® which was placed on section E9B-1. The NCAT testing track sponsored a two-year cycle where trafficking was applied by using a fleet of heavily loaded tractor-trailer rigs to provide the equivalent of 10 million; 18,000-pound single-axle loads (EASLs). NCAT also applied a design lifetime of truck traffic averaging ten to fifteen years within the two-year period.

Each rig in the five-truck fleet ran an average of 680 miles per day in order to achieve a real world traffic simulation. During the trafficking phase, performance of the test sections were studied and FORTA-FI® has passed with flying colors. Stay tuned as the Alabama DOT is planning on leaving FORTA®’s test section in place for another 10 million EASLs to further study the benefits of utilizing FORTA-FI® in the asphalt mix.